“A Glimpse of Glory”

Feb. 14, 2010

First Presbyterian Church, South Lyon

The Rev. Annemarie S. Kidder

Luke 9:28-35

Today’s story is one of the strangest in the entire New Testament.  It makes preachers want to take the day off and Sunday school teachers resort to doing a craft, instead of teaching the lesson.  The story is strange because of the many unusual happenings.  Jesus’ face changes dramatically into something mysterious.  His clothes take on a gleaming powerful radiance.  Two long-dead figures appear out of nowhere and start talking with Jesus.  And a booming voice thunders words from a cloud.   

The story marks what we call Transfiguration Sunday.  On this day, which both Catholic and Protestant churches observe, we have to try and make sense out of the seemingly nonsensical.  The word “transfiguration” means “being changed into something else.”  And in our context it is Jesus who is being changed into something else.  Only for a moment, the visible and concrete of human form transfigures into something transcendent and otherworldly.  The features of his face look like pure energy.  Plain clothes radiate with an explosive light.  And the dead come back to life.  Only for a moment, the disciples catch a glimpse of what lies behind the stage of world and human history.  They can spot a divine stage director behind the facts of life, the face of God behind a human face, the future outcome beyond the present and the past. 

In religious language, catching such a glimpse and holding on to it is commonly called faith.  We walk by faith, and not by sight, says the Apostle Paul.  We see only as through a glass darkly, not at all clearly or in its entirety.  We believe that God is good.  We trust that he loves us with an overwhelming, incomparable love and that nothing can eternally separate us from God’s love, even in the face of virulent opposition, in the face of temporary setbacks and dismay. 

Surely, we all have had such a glimpse of glory at one time.  We go on a mission trip and come back vibrant with excitement over new friends we’ve made and the modest service rendered.  We attend a Christian conference and in the communal experience of worship and fiery keynote speakers we rise to mountain top highs.  We pray for a sign from God and out of nowhere there appears someone we have never met before and who we may never see again but who at that precise moment acts as a messenger from God, like an angel, through whom God gives us a signal and the green light.   

We do not lack such experiences.  What we lack, though, is knowing how to use them.  Commonly we wish to prolong these glimpses of glory, freeze dry them into a permanent state, and make them the standard for daily life.  Like Peter, we say, “let’s build up rules that will make them stay, let’s fix them in place.”  We can see this in our story.  The disciples are with Jesus on a mountain top, groggy and half asleep, while Jesus is praying.  But then, out of the blue, they are woken up by this bright shine of glory.  God breaks into their half-sleep.  And to them Jesus looks now like someone completely different.  Also, two men have appeared, namely Moses and Elijah, who have come back from the dead.  Moses, of course, is the great lawgiver of the Jewish nation to whom one attributes the first five books of Hebrew scripture and the Ten Commandments, and Elijah is the great prophet.  This means that the Law, symbolized by Moses, and the Prophets, by Elijah, are talking and meeting in and with Jesus and are coming together through him.  What more do you need for a happy life?  We’ve got it all right here.  Let’s build them a house quickly, so they stay here and won’t go away.  That’s what Peter is saying when he volunteers himself and the other two disciples for the task.  Our Gospel writer Luke tries to excuse Peter’s impetuous ambition.  To him, Peter is crude and narrow in interpreting the vision.  He was “not realizing what he was saying,” wasn’t thinking straight and a bit blind. 

If we demand prolonged, repeated mountain top experiences from the Lord, we are not thinking clearly and are a bit blind, too.  For the mountain top isn’t supposed to last.  Rather, it’s to be a source for future encouragement and strength.  It’s to be a lens and a telescope.  It helps us see the best that’s yet to come, the extraordinary that lies behind the ordinary, the divine beneath the mundane.  When God grants us this overwhelming closeness and peace, we want to prolong it.  We feel saddened when it goes away, and that is quite human.  But we should then go on and remember it rightly so it becomes a source of our strength and hope and faith. 

One of my favorite saints is the fourteenth-century English mystic Julian of Norwich.  For years, she had prayed to experience Christ’s passion and love.  Then finally, at age thirty, her prayer was answered.  She was struck violently ill and believed to die, so that the priest was brought in for last rites.  With her gaze on the crucifix, she experienced sixteen revelations concerning Christ and immediately recovered.  Julian then recorded these visions, calling them Showings.  For twenty years, she would ponder them in her little room next to the church, even writing a second, more detailed draft.  Today, her Showings are considered one of the great classics of Christian literature, and I commend them to you.  Thousands of people have read and studied them.  And for the rest of her life, Julian studied them herself prayerfully and gratefully.  In fact, these visions may well have been the source of her cheerful and lovely disposition, so lovely that people would come from far and wide to consult with her about the things of God. 

Julian knew how to remember rightly.  She didn’t say, Why don’t you give me more of these fabulous moments with you, God.  She said, I gratefully receive these short glimpses of your glory.  And I will keep them ever before me.  Do you know what happens when we focus on the good of God’s grace for us, when we repeatedly bring it forward into the present?  Do you know what happens when we rightly remember our Savior and what he has done for us?  We, like him, become transfigured.  Our features take on a subtle radiance.  Joy from within pushes from the inside out.  And words of abundance and hope spill from our lips.